


“when I want to dance”

by ninemoons42



Series: dance for your heart [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Elisabeth das Musical - Freeform, Falling In Love, Inspired by Music, M/M, Past Abuse, Recovery, References to Takarazuka Kagekidan, Slow Build, Slow Burn, and when they don't have the words they can dance, boys trying to express themselves with words, emotional tension, inspired by theater, past abusive relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 20:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12872091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Noctis leaps headlong once again into the minutiae of his dream project, and somehow the weeks and hours of preparation and brainstorming go by more quickly, because Prompto's there to provide him with fresh perspectives, hand warmers, and the occasional joke.He's grateful, he really is, but also: he's starting to approach a line that he doesn't know whether he'll be allowed to cross.(And also they dance. Because that's still the best way they have of expressing themselves.)





	“when I want to dance”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akumeoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akumeoi/gifts).



> References: 
> 
> [Wenn ich tanzen will](https://youtu.be/uDeXe9OwhxU) \-- live concert duet -- Uwe Kröger and Pia Douwes 
> 
> [Die Schatten werden länger and Mayerling-Walzer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ1nQcvFiWg) \-- video montage from the 2012-2013 Korean run of Elisabeth -- Kim Junsu and Kim Seungdae

Thump and creak and groan in the ceiling right above him, the building seeming to settle in the weary hours of the deepening night, and he doesn’t really hear the sounds as much as he feels them rumbling in his skin and his sinews, and he draws his blanket closer around his shoulders, and not for the first time, he thinks he really needs to buy a space heater, or something, because he’s cold and he’s the only person who feels cold in this place: cold enough that he has to bear down on his heels where he’s sitting on them, so he can keep his toes and his insteps warm.

Everyone else who trains in Ignis’s studio must run far warmer than he does, Noctis thinks with a wince as he shifts some more, and that’s a pain in the backside when everyone who trains in these rooms, everyone who moves through these rooms, works and works and works, sweat and strained muscles and sequences of dance steps, which means: far too much body heat, that collects in spreading stains in workout clothes.

And it’s an irony, because even now he can feel the pricking hereafter of running and leaping and spinning and landing in his feet, hot and sharp, and yet the rest of him is shivering -- the rest of him is huddled beneath his green blanket where it should have been far too hot and all he wants is to hoard every degree of heat that he can, which is nothing more than an actual impossible thing.

He’s left feeling like he’s torn down the middle: torn between the need to get back to his feet, to the mad twirl and reckless drive of the rhythm of drums and flutes and fiddles, and the need to rest.

His knees hurt. His shoulders. His hips.

He needs to rest.

Again the cautionary tale. Again the examples, the people whom he cares for: his mother. Ravus.

And there are footsteps moving towards him, loud only because the studio’s an hour past closing, and Ignis has gone home to dinner and whatever it is that newlyweds like him do, and Noctis still blows out a relieved breath when the familiar lanky shape of Prompto slips through the door and closes it behind him.

Laptop bag hanging from his shoulder, coffee stains and sugar-crumbs in crusted curves on the skin of his arms, and his hair’s come down from its styled peaks again, falling in softer spikes around his ears and into his eyes.

“Hey,” Noctis says, softly.

“Hey. You look fucking cold,” Prompto says, pulling wires upon wires from his bag. 

“I guess I do, since I feel every inch of it,” he says.

“Yeah, I figured that, so here. Went and looked in all the boxes I still had at home, just for you. I don’t know where all the rest have gone and frankly I’m not sure I care about them, since they’re not here and I can’t use them any more, can I. But, hey, maybe it’s luck, because -- I found that.” 

“That” is the floppy object that he deposits in the palm of Noctis’s hand: small star in clear plastic and the seams picked out in black, and blue liquid sloshing around inside, buoying up a small piece of metal. 

“Click the metal bit inside,” is all the instruction that Noctis gets, however, and before he does he blows warmth onto his own fingertips.

Three clicks, four, and the blue liquid starts to turn opaque, pale spots appearing and spreading -- slowly at first, then more and more quickly.

And the star itself grows warmer and warmer even as he starts, even as he nearly drops it: and, surprised and grateful, he clutches its developing heat between his hands. 

“Never used one of those before? I always carried a bunch around with me, when it got cold,” Prompto says with only a faint hitch right on the edges of the words. “There’s a trick to those, they’re actually reusable, so I knew I’d always be able to get some use out of them.” 

“I want two dozen,” Noctis says, pressing the knot of his hot hands and the blue star to his forehead, and this time when he sighs it’s because he really, really appreciates the relief that he’s feeling. “I want a gross. I don’t ever want to be without -- what are these again?”

“Reusable hand warmers. I got that from one of those sports places, you know, you might want to ask in the hiking and camping goods section? People take those into the mountains when they go trekking and things. They’re not that expensive, I think. Shouldn’t be any problem buying a box. You look like you really need them.”

All the while Prompto’s been setting up a big gray block of a laptop, and a squat electric-green external speaker, and the machine hums sleekly as it comes to life. 

“Drive?” he asks, after a moment.

Noctis reaches for the outside pocket of his bag and passes over a white USB key.

“Okay, let’s do this.”

He may or may not list gratefully into Prompto’s side when he sits down on the floor with him: and that might be because Prompto sort of looks warm, or at the very least like he might be going off on a hiking trip himself, in heavy boots and at least two layers of clothing that Noctis can see. Beneath the black t-shirt that is part of his uniform at the coffee shop is something that looks very much like the upper half of a pair of long johns, its white sleeves chopped roughly off past his elbows, exposing the freckles dotted towards his wrists.

One of Prompto's arms wraps around his shoulder, and it’s a welcome warm weight.

“Thanks,” he says, softly, and he’s glad to hide the flush of his cheeks in the folds of his blanket.

“Yeah,” is the equally quiet reply. 

With the other hand Prompto fiddles with the USB key and the keyboard on the laptop, and soon enough the familiar music rises around them: white masks and characters shrouded in tattered gray veils, and the mad rictus-grin of the man in the striped shirt -- 

The story’s all but coming out of Noctis’s ears now, two or three weeks into the marathon, and the songs all sound different when they’re done in different languages.

“Still think the white clothes make sense,” Prompto mutters, motioning to the screen with his chin. “Der Tod in white, and not just at the ending.”

Noctis nods, once, as they pick up the thread of the previous week’s conversation. “Starting to think it’ll work if we reversed the colors, yeah. I mean Sisi already spends a shit ton of time in black, so it’s not like it’s going to be a big change for the character.”

“So, why don’t we go back to the other idea: Der Tod, but in colors,” and it’s not the first time Prompto’s said that, but he rolls his eyes every time and that is what makes Noctis smirk back at him, at the mirthful lines in the corners of his eyes.

He plays along, again. “Green.”

“What, seriously?” Prompto asks, looking highly affronted. “Red.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Dark red, Noctis. Maybe a little sequin action. Think about it, Der Tod in all the spangles while Sisi’s pretty and austere and shit.”

“I’m not even going to start, what is wrong with you,” he says, and he tips himself over onto his side with a laugh to avoid the elbow that Prompto pretends to drive into his ribs. “I would have agreed to dark green and a little glitter. Not red. We saw a Tod with green-streaked hair. That would have suited me fine.”

“You’re an ass and you have no taste,” is Prompto’s verdict.

He laughs some more, waits for Prompto to shake his head and grin, before uncapping the vacuum bottle that he’s remembered to bring with him this time. Bright waft of flowers and tea, the scent of a far-off spring filling him up, as he pours, as he hands the cup-top over.

This is Ignis’s idea that they’re putting into practice: to watch as many different versions of the stage musical as they can find, and to pick through the interesting details, and see what can be improved upon -- and _Elisabeth_ is so popular that there are a lot of versions to check out, and in several languages to boot, so there are many details still to examine.

Even with the idea of trimming out a lot of the secondary characters in favor of telling the story almost entirely through rhythm and movement, he’s still got a few things to consider. He’s pretty sure he’s set on the idea of small hand-props, to help exaggerate various gestures, like a folding fan for Sisi and a sword -- not the stage version with its overwrought double-eagle hilt, just something elegant and spare -- for Der Tod. 

Prompto’s simply fallen head over heels for several of the all-female productions, and sometimes when they go out for a meal Noctis can hear him singing softly, tripping over the accented bits.

And always, always, no matter what version they’re debating, no matter if they’re snickering at odd design choices or ridiculous beards or -- when they’re particularly unlucky -- the occasional missed note, they pay a little more attention when the focus of the story shifts briefly to the doomed son of the title character.

They do this often enough that they always do the same things, once the little-boy version of Rudolf appears on stage: Noctis offers to share his blanket with Prompto, who wraps an arm around his shoulders in thanks, the two of them huddled close.

This time, Noctis blinks, after the line about the kitten, and he pauses the playback and points to the current Der Tod -- who looks like a male ingenue, but moves with a barely leashed and terrifying intensity. 

When that Der Tod smiles, the sharp cutting edges of malice appear in all the lines of his face. 

“Sorry. Need to check something. Can I zoom in on that?”

“Yeah,” Prompto says. “I was going to ask, if you weren’t.”

“Wonder if I’m just seeing things.” 

“Bet you’re not,” is the faint answer.

When the image comes up in pixels and fuzzy grains, Noctis squints, and then lets out a small sound of disbelief. “That’s a first, right?”

“Yeah.” Prompto tilts his head this way and that to study the actor’s face.

Noctis thinks back to the other videos that they’ve watched, the full-length productions from all over the world, and most of the time the various Der Tod actors have had predictable reactions to the idea of a child deliberately killing a cat: surprise is the usual reaction, then a fleeting moment of disapproval.

But in several of the most recent stagings Der Tod doesn’t even react to Rudolf’s behavior, and Prompto never fails to roll his eyes when that happens.

There, now, on the screen, is something entirely new, and Noctis hits Play again, with dread sinking through his stomach, through his feet, out and down to pin him where he’s sitting.

The actor playing Der Tod is leaning toward the heedless glee in the young prince’s eyes, going so far as to approach him and tilt his head up. Asking him to repeat the little horror story -- all in warm and inviting smiles.

“Scary,” Noctis decides, after a moment. 

“We’re going to see that again,” he hears Prompto say. “I mean, in the rest of the show.”

The dread in his voice claws at Noctis, makes him look over and put a hand on his shoulder. Makes him hope that he can try to reassure him. “Want to stop?”

“No, actually, let’s just skip to those other two bits and then we can get Rudolf’s story out of the way,” is the unsteady response. “It’s not like this is a new story, is it. We’ve seen all this shit before, just not -- that.”

And Noctis hates that he knows so much about the way the color drains from Prompto’s face, the way his freckles go stark and drawn when he’s reminded of something he doesn’t want to remember.

So he hits pause, again, just as the song about shadows growing darker swells at last into its full verses.

For the first time, he holds his hand out between them, over Prompto’s knee. 

And asks, “Want to?”

Again that pale pallid wash of fear -- but it flows away as soon as Prompto takes his hand. 

He has to shift closer so he doesn’t strain his arm -- and Prompto seems to meet him halfway. 

If they had been sitting crunched beneath the blanket before, now he thinks they’ve got to be tangled together.

He wants to ask, wants to know, what it would be like to actually be holding Prompto in his arms.

It’s not the first time he’s had the thought; it’s just the first time he needs to work to keep it off his face.

He pretends to pay attention, instead, as he resumes the video.

And regrets it near the end of the song, as Der Tod laughs, sharp and sweet, right in the horror and the despair flashing past on Prince Rudolf’s tortured face.

“Fuck,” he says.

And Prompto replays that short sequence, replays Rudolf’s agony and Der Tod’s malice -- replays it twice, three times. 

His shoulders frozen in rigid lines.

Grief and hatred and dread, all pulling at the too-sharp angles in his face.

Just as he’s reaching out to play it again, Noctis stops him, gently, with fingers on his white-clad wrist. “You can watch it again later. We can watch it again later. Can we tap out now, though? Please?”

Those blue eyes blink and -- come back to life, the blank haze in him disappearing, like something breaking and splintering. “I -- don’t want to go back to it,” Prompto says, after a moment. “I was -- replaying it though. Why was I doing that?”

He doesn’t have any answers.

Both of Prompto’s hands wrap around his own, now, and he lets him hold on.

“I hate this,” Prompto says, after a moment, and the words trickle out, continuing, slowly running together. “Wait. No. I don’t mean you, I really don’t. And I don’t mean watching the musical, I don’t mean making fun of silly dresses and overdone uniforms. I don’t mean that; it’s always so much fun to look at those things and -- and try to say, you can probably do better, you can probably find someone with better taste. That kind of thing, that’s a hoot, and I know you’re having fun, too.

“But -- that, that last thing, with that really scary Tod -- that was maybe a little too much, wasn’t it?”

“It was.” 

He doesn’t want to say the next thing, and he hates himself for it.

“That happened to you. And, and not just once. Right?”

“Not just once,” Prompto agrees.

Nothing that Noctis can do, when Prompto pulls away and hunches in protectively, long limbs compressed into the smallest possible knot he can make of himself.

He gives up his blanket completely, places the trailing end of it in Prompto’s fist -- and Prompto bunches it up into a long crumpled length and holds on to it with his hands and his knees.

Noctis shifts some more, giving Prompto more space, right until his own back hits the wall and he grits his teeth against the sigh that’s threatening to jar loose. 

Luna’s words echoing in his head, again and again, so he has to be careful with his reactions, but he’s also just himself, and he can’t stop being himself -- 

And so he makes a fist, clenches it until it hurts -- slams it into the floor -- 

The crack of impact jolts through him, and he hisses out his pain and his fear and his frustration and -- he does it again, and maybe he’s only imagining the smell of copper and rust on the air.

“Noctis.”

He freezes, and feels shame burn in his throat, and makes himself look up and meet Prompto’s eyes.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be. You -- it’s a pretty mild reaction, I guess, and I’ve seen a few of those,” Prompto says, after a moment.

“The mere fact that you can say that with such a straight face is -- I think I’m going to be sick,” Noctis hears himself say. “Because someone did something terrible to you and you’re telling people it did happen, you’re not denying it, you’re not hiding it, and they react in all the different ways and you’re paying attention to all those different ways. We must all look like idiots to you: you had the bad thing happen to you and you just kept going, you just keep going. And here we are tying ourselves in knots when we’re only hearing the story at second-hand.”

“I wish I knew why, why I can talk about that shit with you and not -- freak out all over the place,” is the quiet response. “I hate that I still have days when I have to scream about it, when I have to break things, but -- it’s a weird comfort to me, too. I mean, you guys didn’t have a choice about not being there when bad shit was going down in my life, but when you hear it, when you figure it out, you’re angry for my sake even when it’s all in the past and -- that’s kind of nice. Kind of. Makes me feel like I can totally have those feelings of wanting to throw things, that they’re normal feelings for this situation.” Harsh scrape of a laugh. “I don’t like you getting hurt though. So -- don’t punch the floor? Or anything? Please?”

“I -- yeah,” Noctis says.

Beginnings of a bruise over his knuckles, but he’s not bleeding.

Some instinct propels him to his feet and to the barre instead: he’s not even thinking about what he’s doing. Heels up and up and he’s straining for his balance, trying to center himself over his shaking toes -- 

And Prompto’s rising to his feet, too. Blanket dropped into a heap next to the laptop. “Noctis?”

“Clearing my mind,” he hears himself say, as he lowers himself back down. Breath, beat, and he goes up again, and down -- a handful of repetitions, till he feels a little warmer, especially around the knees.

The warmth helps. It keeps him in the here and now.

“Clearing it -- wait, like, you don’t want to think, is that it,” is the response, which is slow, but only because Prompto looks like he’s thinking the words out, like he’s picking them out carefully, and Noctis appreciates his immense strength, the incredible gift he has for doing that.

That he still has that gift despite everything else.

“I don’t want to think. Not about Sisi. Not about Tod. Not about everything else. I just want to be. This is how I do it.” Back down to the earth for a breath, for the sake of keeping his balance and not toppling over, for the sake of fighting off the threat of a cramp. “I just want to move.”

“Okay.” 

And, almost as an afterthought, almost as if he thinks he’ll be denied, Prompto asks, in a small voice: “Can I? Not-think with you?”

There’s only one way to respond to that particular question, Noctis thinks, and he says it out loud: “Come on.”

And Prompto squares up to him right there at the barre, the two of them less than an arm’s length apart. 

He feels his breathing change: he speeds up a little, and that’s not his rhythm and it leaves him only a little bit lightheaded as he mirrors Prompto, as he falls into the patterns and the spaces of him.

Freckled hand moving in his direction, and he catches it and holds it very gently with his fingers clasped around warmth, before he opens his hand and doesn’t break the contact. His palm against Prompto’s, just at chest height.

Waiting.

He’s not -- he’s not thinking. He’s not expecting or anything. That much he does know.

He’s here, and he wonders if he’s going to move or if Prompto is, and -- 

“Okay. Okay. Whatever this is,” Prompto says, only mostly under his breath.

Close into waltz position, Prompto’s hands radiating warmth into him, and Noctis follows him, easily, quick-tripping steps away from the barre and now they’re circling and circling the center of the room, and it’s not silent at all: their footsteps are the rhythm; and their breaths, overlapping, are the melody -- nothing frightening or freighted with disaster on the move.

Prompto is holding both of his hands now, all their fingers carefully intertwined.

His mind catches on that point of contact and doesn’t let it go as he’s led into all kind of swirling figures, as he watches Prompto’s eyes and that’s how he knows -- here he has to break away and kick out into a turn, and here he has to come back and close in again. Here he has to let Prompto go so he can fly out into a series of violent powerful spins. Here he can’t flinch away as Prompto kicks right into the space that Noctis occupies in the world, whirling wind of the passage of a booted foot riffling the hair behind his ear. 

“Okay,” Prompto is almost asking.

“Keep going,” Noctis says, in the same hushed tones. “We’re okay. Keep going.”

“Yeah, okay, we’re okay -- ” 

On, and on, and he’s almost forgotten that they’re dancing without any kind of music at all. That they’re dancing to the pure beat of their bodies, the pure flow of hands and feet and muscles on the move -- and their reflections in the mirrors, as they advance and retreat, as they come together and fall apart, the spaces between them appearing and disappearing, wide and narrow and _almost gone_ \--

How long they dance, he doesn’t know, he can’t tell -- and he never wants it to end, not even when pain streaks up his leg from a mistimed landing, not even when he’s mostly out of breath. 

He doesn’t want this to end: the harsh knock of his heart in his chest and the dampness on his fingertips every time he takes Prompto’s hands, every time Prompto releases him.

The movement of Prompto’s wrists as they catch and release each other.

But they do end, they do run down -- at least they do it together, and that’s a small gift, with Prompto’s arms around his waist, with his arms around Prompto’s shoulders, twirling slowly, back to the spiral of the waltz with which they’d started.

He measures out his time in the rasp of air as Prompto breathes -- and then those breaths turn into words: “This is so strange.”

“Good strange, bad strange,” he says, and it will kill him to let Prompto go, he thinks, and he will probably have to do that soon -- that moment is hurtling toward him, heavy inevitable -- 

“Just strange. But don’t let go, please.”

Noctis blinks.

Nothing to do with that quiet tone except roll with it, and keep rolling with it, even if he wants to look at Prompto and see what he really thinks, what he really feels.

All he can do is ask: “Why is it strange?”

“Oh you know. I know you a little. You know me a little. We dance like this and it’s strange because I don’t know a lot of people who’d do this with me, like dance in total silence, and you -- you just did. You just did that. You didn’t even ask what was going on. I mean who does that? 

“And, and I want to help you even when I only know a very little about things like _Elisabeth_ and producing, like, an actual show on a stage for, for people who’ll pay for tickets and things. You learned about my past and you didn’t want to run away screaming -- wait, did you?”

“I wanted to run and find who’d hurt you. Think I told you that,” Noctis says, and he notices they’re drifting into a corner, so he corrects and turns and Prompto’s feet weave a path around his, like breathing.

“Same thing everyone else said: Gladio and Ignis and even that manager of yours. I don’t understand that. Like you all just decided to trust me.”

“Any reason for us not to?”

Prompto spins him away for a moment before closing the distance again, and before answering. “The moment I fuck up you’ll all be gone.”

“You might be surprised,” he says. “Look, I’ll just take Ignis as an example, okay? How long do you think we’ve known each other?”

“Years at least.”

“Ten, yeah,” Noctis says. “And how many times do you think I’ve fucked things up for him? How many times do you think he’s fucked things up for me?”

Prompto looks up at him, and blinks, and shakes his head. “I don’t even want to guess?” 

“Good, because there’s only one answer to both questions. We lost count within the first year,” he says, and he lets himself laugh a little. “Seriously, that happened. We both did terrible things to each other. And you can tell we’re still friends, yeah?”

“Ten years is a long time to build a friendship on.”

“And that’s where Gladio comes in,” and it’s his turn to guide Prompto into a gentle spin. “I grew up next door to him. We were neighbors for the entire time I lived in the house next door, and I didn’t actually meet him until, what was it, two years ago, when he asked Ignis to marry him. So we’ve only really known each other for a short time. Doesn’t stop me from being his friend, or him from being mine: am I still making sense?”

“I, I think,” but that answer is a long time coming.

“It’s all right if you can’t believe it. But you better be prepared for all of us to prove it -- over and over again, if we have to. Ignis is especially persistent,” Noctis says, chuckling softly and ducking his head a little. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

That gets him a burst of a surprised laugh, brief and quickly gone.

And it’s almost not a surprise when Prompto stops moving. When he tries to summon up a real smile. Noctis can see the twitch in his mouth, the convulsive movement in his throat as he swallows.

“Fuck,” Prompto says, eventually, and then that smile does break through, bright enough and warm enough that Noctis feels like he’s suddenly staring straight at the sun, despite the night, despite the lateness of the hour. “I -- I believe you, Noctis. I might be an idiot for believing you but -- I believe you.”

And he grins back, breathless, weightless, grateful. “It’ll be worth it. We’ll do everything we can,” and he knows he’s still holding on to Prompto, so there’s no way of hiding it when he says, “I’ll make it worth it.”

**Author's Note:**

> ninemoons42 on Tumblr: [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


End file.
